The questions about Dubai and the Maldives, or even the idea of Thailand, feel familiar and almost banal in today’s travel discourse. This won’t surprise anyone. A little secret: even a traveler with planning may not leave a strong impression on their own. Picture a visit to Dubai—expensive, warm, yet somehow unremarkable. The skyline is a sea of nearly identical towers. Each building looks slightly different: one with a slanted roof, another with a dome, a third with a cone. Yet the essence remains a man-made oasis far from natural horizons, a desert city that can wear out the gaze of a visitor. To a Russian eye, it can feel disheartening in its artificial certainty.
Conversely, the North of Russia offers a different kind of magnetism. It’s cold, costly, and endlessly fascinating. More importantly, it resonates deeply, almost as a personal mark of achievement for many travellers who look for meaning in the journey itself.
Indeed, a traveler can hop to Dubai aboard a double-decker A380. But in the polar night, the adventure shifts—five hundred kilometers along the broad roads of the Kola Peninsula to chase the aurora or to meet the Sami, or to savor the freshest sea urchin.
With that in mind, the decision becomes clear. The narrator is not a purist who camps under the stars or gnaws canned food to prove resilience. Rather, they are a Moscow resident with the whole spectrum of city comforts and curiosities intact, seeking a balance between ease and wonder.
Murmansk reveals itself as a surprisingly comfortable city. Most hotels are full, and the few that have space sometimes struggle under scrutiny. Yet the rooms are clean, hot water is reliable, and the atmosphere is amiable. The truth is that Murmansk was never designed as a tourist hub. It began in 1916 as a strategic port to support logistics with Russia’s allies during the First World War. The times were turbulent—revolutions, civil conflicts—yet the harbor needed to exist, an ice-free gateway beyond the Arctic Circle. The city grew as a working town: barracks and dwellings built for dockers, laborers, and sailors. War came again, shaping the urban fabric, leaving chimneys as monuments that endured. Some say more bombs fell on Stalingrad, yet the port endured. After the Great Patriotic War, reconstruction brought Soviet Empire style into Murmansk, a straightforward yet varied urban landscape. Tall and short blocks—five, nine, or twelve stories—formed a typical microdistrict. It isn’t declared beautiful, but it embodies a simple, honest functionality that defines the northern edge of the country.
At the heart of the city sits a vast port—cranes, shipyards, repair piers, lighthouses, and accessible roads. It’s common to glimpse gigantic cargo ships and a nuclear-powered icebreaker when looking out over the water. Russia stands alone in maintaining a nuclear icebreaker fleet, a practical asset for navigating the Northern Sea Route and supporting economic life in this region. Locals recall a time when the port briefly closed for days, and the familiar harbor bustle disappeared; it felt as if the city had paused, listening for a pulse that hadn’t yet returned.
The climate remains brisk even when temperatures hover around -5 degrees. Humidity and wind shape daily life here, and the people adapt with resilience and purpose. A sense of admiration grows as one watches locals live, work, and build families in a place with a winter that looms long and a summer that passes in a blink.
A few kilometers from Murmansk lies the village of Kola. For Murmansk residents, the name signals the river first, then the settlement, with other associations taking a back seat. The name itself is tied to the notion of a golden river or a river of fish, a hint of the abundance found in the Barents Sea, rivers, and lakes that feed the region.
The flag of Kola is notably touching, showing a mythical Yudo-fish-whale whose face resembles that of a cat or a small creature. It’s a reminder that the area’s ties to whales are strong, though the emblem’s designer may not have fully captured the mammals’ true nature.
Every local restaurant in Murmansk offers fresh catches—fish, scallops, and chestnuts—that arrive on the table without thawing. The fare is not only abundant but affordable, a rarity in many northern markets.
As dusk settles, the search for the aurora begins. Guides, seasoned in forecasting cloud cover and solar wind, coordinate with one another to share sightings and tips about where the lights might appear that night. A common note from many tours is that the aurora can behave unpredictably; sometimes it glows brilliantly, other times observers must content themselves with a faint shimmer—luck often plays a decisive role. Some guides joke about the proximity of visitors to other travelers, reminding that the spectacle belongs to those with patience and a bit of luck.
And then the glow arrived. It appeared softly, so that the naked eye might miss it, yet modern smartphone sensors captured it with surprising clarity. The experience felt intimate, a reminder that the natural world still holds surprises even in the most visited corners of the globe.
There are more stories to tell—about the Sami and about Teriberka—but those will come in the next section.